How do you sell to enterprises?
This is my first post; apologies if someone already posted on this topic, I was not able to find a similar post easily.
Have you tried selling your product [software, hardware, services, etc] to enterprise customers? If so what worked and what didn't?
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You might find this guid useful: http://www.enterprisesales.nyc/ My experience tells that an important part of the enterprise sales is be patient and build personal connections with the companies in the target market even before you start selling anything. Sales cycle can be long (sometimes more than a year). Try to win 1-2 initial client first and make the happy than ask for recommendation to others. Do not start with the biggest players in the field first go to the middle size ones, build reputation an practice and go to the big ones with references.
I've been involved a fair bit in enterprise sales over the years, on both sides of the table. There is actually a couple of different things what "enterprise sales" can mean:
.. True enterprise sales, with 3-6+ month sales cycle and 6+ figure deal value. Very hard for startups, UNLESS the enterprise is desperate for your product i.e. your product is that famous 10x better.
.. Saying "enterprise sales" when you actually mean B2B sales to startups or SMBs. Much much easier, faster, and lower deal value. But the buyer is often founder-owner and buys from "his" money, and can be very cost-conscious.
.. Selling something not-so-critical to a small corner of a large enterprise. Surprisingly very different than selling to startups or SMBs - there is still usually procurement process hassles, but inversely the buyer doesn't pay from his own pocket, so they part with the money more easily.
What kind of enterprise sales you mean exactly and what are you selling?
Hello there! Thank you for the great feedback.
We are working on a SaaS product that lets contractors track work-site requirements. We actually vetted the idea with some smaller contractors before deciding on making it into a product - and these folks have been easier to reach and work with. These partner businesses [small contracting compnies] have been great in providing us great, brutal, and honest feedback. However, as we mature the technology into an actual product and start putting a road map to reach larger contracting companies [think Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG etc] I want to start thinking about how to reach these larger consulting/contracting companies.
I'm not sure how representative my sample is, but my earlier startups have sold (mainly services) to one or two fortune 500 companies and maybe 20 publicly listed companies. The bad news is that I don't think there was even a single deal where we "reached" to a large enterprise and won a deal. Either we got initially contacted by them, because of recommendations, or then our sales guys had a personal connection in the enterprise who became our champion there.
Probably not what you wanted to hear, and it is just my "sample". Who knows, maybe we were just incompetent... When your company grows in size and name, things should become a lot easier. It's just the first half a decade or so that is painful :)
Good luck!
Actually what you provide is great prospective and helps me set expectations.
If you can be more specific about your product/ service and the potential customer group. That would be awesome.
In general, you can still with basic frameworks like Business Model Canva, Value Proposition Design, etc. Build up a story that addresses a real problem. Go out and talk to customers, gather as much feedback as possible. Repeat the process until you see a major pattern.
No matter you're going into a B2B or B2C environment. It's all about the experiment, iteration, and scale. Do not afraid to fail.
I was inspired by some favorite reads including Design to Grow by David Butler, Hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. I hope it helps. @ketchuponcake
Have you already read Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross?
I have not! Thanks for the suggestion
The first thing you should do is spend a day or two reading that book. The author was the sales person who created the sales system for Salesforce CRM. He created a repeatable sales system using inside sales.
Selling technology to enterprise customers is a very specific process. It's a tried and true system that works if you have the discipline to stick with it.
You should also research and understand the Solution Selling methodology. It'll be helpful in putting it all together.
I am working on selling to enterprise and, unfortunately, don't have anything that works yet.
I am finishing up reading Lean B2B and finding that valuable. Essentially, I read Lean Startup and quickly realized while a lot of it is good it is very consumer focused and things like user validation are very different in the enterprise world. I went looking for something that builds on Lean Startup but focuses on B2B and enterprise and that's how I found Lean B2B.
Everything I've read so far is that businesses are still run by people and people are still making buying decisions. So, there is still a lot of relationship building and people are still buying based on their perception of trust and confidence in you and your product.
Hope that helps,
P.S. I think there is an opportunity for marketing automation where users can pick a "profile", write some ad content and visuals, and pay so the SaaS then auto posts at the right times to the right places based on the selected profile. Profiles might by "mobile app", "B2C SaaS", "B2B SaaS", "Consultant", "Retail", "Restaurant", etc.